


A Floral Fuck You

by HaroThar



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, M/M, Rivalry, Robotics major Keith, florist shiro, fuck you flowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-04 10:24:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14018205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HaroThar/pseuds/HaroThar
Summary: Keith is sick and tired of his classmate's shit and decides to get him a bouquet of loathing. Shiro is left starstruck by the whirlwind boy who comes into his flower shop asking for his help.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired by [this post](http://imhereformysciencefriends.tumblr.com/post/172014298192/flower-shop-au) and also the Sheith discord I very recently joined

Shiro was the sort of person that when he got into something, he _really_ got into it. Maybe if he had been born a decade or two later than he had, his adolescent fascination with space would’ve taken him to it. He had diligently memorized constellations, to the point where he could recognize what time of year it was and where he was just by looking at the stars, back when he was a teenager. Then he had gotten interested in the language of flowers—he fell ass-backwards into it, actually. His college roommate, Matt, had sent him a bouquet of white roses to tease him when he’d been dumped by a boy that Matt had accurately predicted to be no good. So Shiro had sent him a whole bundle of foxglove in return, having googled for flowers meaning sarcasm. “Insincerity” had been the closest he’d managed, but it had been close enough. Then one thing led to another, and Shiro was renting library books about flowers, then buying those seed packets from the front of grocery stores and looking into various soils and getting bigger and bigger pots, then making terrariums, miniature ponds, bonsai, and now he ran his own shop. He made bouquets, certainly, they were the staple of his business and what kept the lights on, but he also made a number of novelty items and the resurgence of the hipster movement was keeping both his business and the people he bought glass bottles from living happily.

So while Shiro was not prepared for someone to barge into his flower shop with murder in his eyes and a demand for help speaking in flower language, that didn’t mean he couldn’t rise to the occasion.

The guy looked to be a small handful of years younger than Shiro, probably still a college student, and appeared, at least outwardly, to be scrappy as hell. He had a bruise on his cheek and his jacket looked like it had been dragged through a desert or two. His hair was, by most standards, in need of a cut, though Shiro found it far from unattractive. His eyes were filled with a primitive sort of fury and Shiro hoped to god that it was fear that was making his mouth go dry beneath the burning sensation of his gaze.

“How do I passive-aggressively say fuck you in flower?” the stranger asked with no preamble. 

Shiro swallowed, blinking rapidly.

“Uh, hello, how can I help you today?” he said, because his brain had apparently switched onto autopilot. “I mean—yeah, I can—what, _exactly,_ are you looking for here?” Shiro wasn’t sure why he was so tongue-tied. So a customer had opened the door a little loudly and had the most _piercing_ eyes he’d ever seen; that was—This wasn’t exactly the most startling thing that had ever happened to him. Get it together, man.

The guy opened his mouth and a little noise slipped out, like the first consonant to a word but not quite. Shiro had the pleasure of seeing mr. short-thin-and-angry do a quick once-over of his body, the anger bleeding out of him in increments as he registered the sight of Shiro’s appearance. Shiro knew how he looked, he went to the gym every morning for a reason, and there was something deeply satisfying about having this particular stranger momentarily getting thrown off track by the sight of him.

“There’s this guy in my robotics class who keeps bothering me for no reason,” the stranger blurted, fire alighting back into his eyes. “He called us rivals? Even though we’ve been stuck together in the _same_ group project every time we’ve had to work together. He keeps telling me to go away and tries to act like he’s better than me and dumb shit like that,” the stranger explained, getting more and more worked up as he went. Shiro wasn’t sure if he’d found his own coherency just yet, so he was glad to listen. “Then the other day he gave me this note during class, written in a language I’d never even seen. So I had to google things for like, an hour, only to find out it was elvish from that old, like, hobbit book series with the rings, which I don’t even care about, so then I had to figure out what it was even saying and translating elvish is hard, and _then_ it turns out he was just telling me he thought my hair looked like, I dunno, some dumb reference to those books? I googled him and he was this dwarf, gimp-something, and Lance was comparing himself to another character that I also don’t care about, the pretty elf boy, so basically he’s calling me short and ugly and he thinks he’s the hottest shit in the ring franchise.” 

The stranger took a deep breath and repositioned his feet, the reflexive ready-stance Shiro recognized from back when he had taken Tae Kwon Do as a teenager. “Which means I have to get him back with something equally elaborate and frustrating. So. How do I say fuck you in the most passive aggressive way possible in flower? Can we use a lot of flowers? A lot of obscure flowers that have really common descriptions so he’ll have to spend forever on google looking for them, and then googling their meanings, so he can fully understand how much I hate him only after hours of pointless bullshit?”

“I can do that,” Shiro said, wondering, a little, if this was what love at first sight felt like.

He’d met pretty boys before, sure he had; _most_ boys were pretty, in his opinion. He’d had some out-there requests from customers. But never had he felt quite so swept off his feet as he did with this 100-pound looking punk roboticist with shaggy hair and eyes like javelins who had some stupid vendetta against an equally stupid boy in his class.

Shiro handled the flowers delicately as he worked, talking with the tiny god of fury who knew how to steal the breath straight from Shiro’s lungs. He caressed the foxglove he included in the bouquet, remembering his own first foray into the world of flower language. It felt altogether too symbolic, that a good natured but passive aggressive joke should start him down his career path, and that a passive aggressive and ornery act of rage should link Shiro’s life together with this punk’s. The final bouquet was beautiful, a mark of Shiro’s mastery. Geraniums for stupidity, foxglove fore insincerity, meadowsweet for uselessness, yellow carnations for disappointment, and orange lilies to symbolize Keith’s hatred. 

Keith. Such a mundane name for someone that came into Shiro’s life like a desert storm. 

“It looks great,” Keith said, cradling the flowers wrapped in lime wrapping paper, the greenish-yellow meant to symbolize sickness (sick of his shit) and disgust (self explanatory). “I’m gonna give this to him tonight; thanks to all those goddamned group projects I know where he lives.”

Keith gave Shiro a grin—a wide, shit-eating, conspiratorial grin. The kind that meant Keith was about to get into shit and Shiro was in on it. An invitation for Shiro to feel just as smug and vindictive as Keith was feeling in that moment, and it just about stole Shiro’s real, actual life energy right out of his soul. 

“Thanks, Shiro.”

Shiro decided he didn’t ever want to hear his own name again, if it wasn’t coming out of Keith’s mouth.

Then Keith turned to leave, and Shiro realized he absolutely _couldn’t_ just let Keith go without—something, anything.

“Keith!” Shiro called, the door to his shop already open. Keith turned, a smile on his lips and a question in his eyes.

“Here, my card,” Shiro said, quickly grabbing one off the counter and extending it to Keith. “Just in case the guy doesn’t get it the first time and you need to make another bouquet.”

Keith laughed and took the card. “Oh, sweet, you have an instagram?”

Shiro nodded, and Keith gave him a wave with the hand holding the card. “Well, I’ll be back as many times as it takes. I’ll see you around, Shiro.”

The door closed on a starstruck Shiro, standing in the middle of his shop, right next to the display of vibrantly red roses.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to thank the folk who left such encouraging comments, I had a vague idea of what happened after chapter one but seeing how enthusiastic you all were really made me want to write this second chapter <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gerbera Daisies mean excitement/cheerfulness   
> Chaenomeles are a relatively hardy, prindly, flowering bush with thorns, the blooms are generally red to pinkish-red in color   
> Foxglove, while meaning insincerity, also means “Sometimes hurt, sometimes heal.”  
>  White Lilies (not the orange ones Keith gave Lance, but the first kind of lily that pops up when you google them) are used as gifts for 2nd wedding anniversaries

Shiro knew who it was by the familiar sound of his door crashing open, but his smile managed to grow somehow larger at the sound of Keith calling his name.

“Shiro! Shiro, Shiro, Shiro, Shiro! Shiro?” Keith rounded the Gerbera Daisies and Shiro got to watch his whole face light up, his chin and shoulders lifting, his grin wide with flyaway hair in his face. He looked like he ran all the way from campus to Shiro’s store, just somewhat winded, a whirlwind of gleeful energy swirling all about him.

“Hey, Kei-” Shiro started, his voice gone embarrassingly warm.

“Guess who _finally_ gets to fistfight Lance?” Keith interrupted, lurching forward a half step, his hands partially outstretched in front of him and balled into fists, and if Shiro didn’t know any better he could’ve swore he saw actual, honest-to-god fire in Keith’s eyes.

“Uh, you?” Shiro asked as he toed the bag of fertilizer a little more out of the way, predicting Keith’s next move (it was scary, how quickly Keith had become familiar. How rapidly Shiro had learned and memorized and how _fast_ the two had grown physically comfortable with and around each other).

“Yes!” Keith exclaimed as he walked in closer, his knees bending in a small dip and his fists pumping in front of his chest. Shiro accepted the hug ‘hello’ that followed, lingering just a second too long, as he always did. Keith fit so perfectly against him, it was hard, not to just- to _want._

“I finally got one of Lance’s meme references,” Keith continued excitedly, hopping up on the store counter so he wouldn’t be in Shiro’s- or any potential customers’- way. “So you know how most of the time, when we text each other it’s just Lance saying some really nasty stuff and I retaliate and we have hour long arguments?”

Shiro nodded. Keith had shown him almost all of their text conversations. Shiro was still ready to angrily send a text of his own to Lance, after he’d called Keith a “lone wolf with horrible teamwork skills, who should absolutely never lead anything” in the group chat, trying to convince the other members of their project to elect Lance as the leader. Keith didn’t even want the role, but the other members knew Keith was the best roboticist in the group and had brought it up.

“Well this time, he told me to meet him at Denny’s this Friday,” Keith told Shiro smugly, chin tilted up in the very impression of a cat surrounded by knives.

“Ah, the fist fight in a Denny’s parking lot meme, a classic,” Shiro remarked. That meme was years old but still good. Like trollface from ragecomics. 

Shiro was very, very lucky that Keith couldn’t talk and bite his lip at the same time, because all listening comprehension flew out the window at mach four at the sight of Keith’s sideways little smirk going even more lopsided as he sucked half his lower lip in. His canine poked out over the skin, sharp and white, and the place where his lip resumed poking out turned a fascinating pinkish-white where the teeth dented it. The rest of his lips seemed only more vibrant by comparison, and Shiro’s heart just about stopped when he noticed Keith’s singular dimple.

“-come with me, if you want. I mean, it’s in the evening, so your store will be closed!” Keith said, and Shiro’s brain regained just enough function to hang off every word. “I mean I’m sure you have better things to do with your Friday night than come watch a couple of college kids beat the shit out of each other-” Shiro didn’t, actually; the highlight of his Fridays were when he and Keith had long text conversations, and the occasional night when the two of them streamed movies together, “-but y’know it would be nice to have you there to like. Yeah, so, you see, spot me, is the reason. Not that I think I’m going to lose! But on the off chance that I do, it’d be nice to have a bro there. To watch me, and make sure I’m alright.”

Shiro had to voluntarily remind himself to breathe.

“Yeah, yeah I’m down,” Shiro said. He sent Keith a (hopefully) daring grin, “Though I can’t imagine you losing to anybody, mister I-have-at-least-one-knife-on-my-person-at-all-times.”

Keith laughed and pulled the switchblade of the day out of his pocket, flipping it open. It was dragon-themed; the hilt was the head and body and the blade was the “tail.”

“Nice.”

“I got it from that one anime store at the mall,” Keith said, appreciating his own knife before flipping it closed and stowing it back away inside his pocket. “And I mean, hey, Lance set the time pretty early. 7:00, right after it gets dark enough to reasonably justify holding a fist fight. If you’re not busy you and I could, y’know, do something afterwards?”

Shiro’s brain jumped immediately to taking Keith- victorious, high off adrenaline and maybe leaning on Shiro just a little- into the Denny’s whose parking lot he just fought in and the two of them sharing milkshakes. Did Denny’s even serve milkshakes? Shiro had only been there once and the he had gone straight for the pancakes and sausage. He had no idea what their menu was like.

“Sounds great, I’m down,” Shiro said, leaning his elbow on the counter Keith sat on. Like this, Keith was just a little bit taller than him. Their faces were awfully close, and Keith’s face was terribly fashionable when dressed in the shadows of looking downward at Shiro. Keith was so short, it was adorable, and Shiro loved seeing him bathed in the lights of his flower shop. But, as Shiro gently reached out and thoughtlessly tucked a lock of hair behind Keith’s ear and smoothed some of his flyaways, Keith looked _really_ good like this, too. Above him.

Shiro was grateful that he smiled when embarrassed and his skin didn’t show his blush well, and that he kept his shop warm enough to justify the flush that he _was_ capable of showing. Hopefully Keith would just think Shiro was smiling at him as a friend who was excited for the upcoming fist fight. Dear lord, Shiro had had a reputation of the golden boy during his own education (what he did when authority figures weren’t looking or when Matt was involved was an entirely separate story) and now here he was, absolutely _delighted_ by the idea of seeing his crush beat the tar out of his crush’s bully.

“I’ll see you Friday, then,” Keith said, still sounding just a touch out of breath from running all the way there.

“Yeah,” Shiro said stupidly, grinning like a fool.

\--

Shiro decided that Keith was absolutely positively never allowed to take his jacket off around him ever again. Sure, _technically,_ Shiro had known that Keith was well muscled (no one lifts three bags of fertilizer like it’s nothing while talking animatedly about motorcycles and hovertech) but actually seeing Keith, with bare arms and wrapped knuckles and a dark tank top and elbow pads, actually seeing his biceps and forearms and shoulders was an entirely different kettle of fish. Not even a kettle, an entirely different ballpark of fish. A whole list of idioms could potentially be mashed together to compare the sight of Keith without his jacket to how ready Shiro was to see that.

“You look good,” Shiro’s mouth said without his brain’s permission. “Ready for a fight,” he tried to cover.

“Oh, I am. This guy has had this coming to him all semester, I cannot _wait_ to punch his face in.”

“Now, Keith,” Shiro said, mock-paternal, “just because you _can_ wipe the floor with somebody doesn’t mean you _should.”_

Keith laughed. Shiro would call it heavenly, but it wasn’t, really. It was a sound _distinctly_ earthy, something soil-warmed and rough. Keith’s laugh- well, Keith in general, was like Chaenomeles: hardy, built to endure through the rough times, ruggedly beautiful with no attempt to hide any thorns.

“Hey, Keith!”

Shiro looked at the approaching boy, the warmth and smile both gone from his face. He’d never been particularly good at glaring at people, but he was a master of the cold, stony, impassive face of neutrality. Lance looked just about how Shiro had expected him to. Plain, maybe on the cuter side but his personality completely ruined whatever generally-acceptable appearance he had. He was wearing a nice shirt, button-down (which was interesting), and new pants. Shiro could tell, because the tag was still on them. 

Lance’s face distorted in confusion at the sight of Keith, who was staring at him in open befuddlement. On the road behind them, the light turned green, and the sound of cars accelerating was the only noise in the area for an uncomfortably long amount of time.

“So,” Keith started, “I think there might have been some sort of mix-up here.”

“Yeah,” Lance agreed, and going off their text conversations it was the easiest agreement the two of them had ever reached. Shiro clasped his hands in front of him, standing loosely at attention. “Just to be clear, I invited you out on a date.”

“You _what?!”_

“Well what did you think it was?” Lance shouted back, sounding defensive.

“A fist fight in the Denny’s parking lot!”

“Why would you think _that?_ ”

“Literally, why would I _not_ think that?”

“We’ve been flirting for months?!” Shiro felt a jolt of rage at that. If that was _flirting,_ then Lance had a seriously warped view of love.

“You have done _nothing_ but antagonize me!” Keith returned, shouting and bristling, hands balling into fists. Atta boy, Keith.

“That’s like, fun, playful- that sort of shit! We mess around because we care!”

“Um, _no_ , we don’t.”

Lance spluttered, his hands gesticulating wildly, “Then why did you send me flowers!?”

“Did you… not look up their meaning?” Keith asked incredulously, sounding genuinely aghast, “I wrote a note specifically telling you to look up their meaning!”

“Yeah, like, two of ‘em. I couldn’t figure figure out what the rest of them even were, but it was like, weddings and hate-love?” Lance said, his shoulders inching ever-upward and seeming highly defensive. Shiro couldn’t say he was displeased by that.

“You absolute ass,” Keith hissed, jabbing a finger Lance’s direction “You made me do all that bullshit trying to figure out and translate your dumbass nerd reference and you didn’t even look up the actual flower meanings?”

“What- it’s _Lord of the Rings!_ Everyone knows about that!”

“I don’t! And I don’t care! You went through hoops to insult me, I went through hoops to insult you, _that_ is all I know about this.”

“I compared us to Gimli and Legolas!” 

“Yeah, I’m short and hairy, you’re the pretty playboy of the franchise, I _did_ get that,” Keith said with a scoff, crossing his arms in a way that Shiro knew was more self-conscious than antagonistic. Anger hummed in Shiro’s gut, knowing that Keith had been insulted based on his height and his hair far too many times. The only acceptable number of times would have been zero.

“No!” Lance shouted, flinging his arms up, “Legolas and Gimli were sworn rivals who, during their time spent together, became fated lovers!”

Keith stared at Lance a moment, his face screwed up in disbelief. “I don’t know your nerd shit, Lance!” he bellowed.

“This is a cultural capstone!”

“Are we even going to fight tonight or what?”

“No! I don’t want to fight you! I wanted to date you!” Lance seemed to remember Shiro. “And who is that?” he asked with a flung hand in Shiro’s direction.

“My boyfriend!” Keith shouted, and Shiro’s stony impassivity was lost in a moment, face gone hot out to his ears and his whole body feeling like it was lifting, eyes wide. Keith also seemed to go rock solid for a moment, frozen. Keith, however, burned far too bright and hot to _remain_ frozen. “So you can piss right off!”

Lance made a strangled, almost hurt noise, and turned around with a “Fine!”

“And good riddance!”

“Whatever, Keith! I’m too good for you anyway!”

Shiro snorted, and at the sound Lance’s shoulders hunched up around his ears, before he redoubled the speed at which he walked away from them.

Which… left Keith and Shiro all alone, the only noise being the ambient sound of cars braking as they approached the stoplight.

“So, uh,” Keith started, not looking at Shiro even as he took the few steps closer to stand at Keith’s side.

“Yeah. Boyfriend, huh?”

Keith slapped both hands on his face and groaned. “This is literally the _worst_ way to tell you but uh, I kinda maybe like you?”

Shiro’s heart was running some kind of cardiovascular marathon, but he just placed his palm on Keith’s (bare) shoulder, sending him the warmest smile he could. And Keith, well, he made Shiro feel warm down to his soul.

“I feel the same,” he said, and wow, was his voice lower? A phenomenon of biology. “And, if at all possible, I would like to take my boyfriend into this Denny’s and buy him something to eat.”

“I could eat,” Keith said.

“It would’ve been insensible to have dinner before a fight,” Shiro remarked, his other hand coming up to rub at the hair on the back of his head.

“That, and I invited you along specifically so we could go out for dinner after the fight,” Keith admitted, half-shrugging and sending Shiro a grin that wasn’t half as guilty as is probably should have been.

Then again, “I accepted your invitation for the exact same reason.”

Keith laughed, and god, no matter how many times Shiro heard it he still wasn’t over that sound. Keith’s arms- those gorgeous, bare, muscular arms, came up around Shiro’s closest arm and Keith linked the two of them together, settling into Shiro’s side like his body was carved to fit Keith there specifically. Shiro realized, then, that he’d come out tonight with a crush and the intention of seeing a fistfight, and was leaving with no fists having fought and a boyfriend. It was painfully absurd, and also left him feeling giddy. He started laughing, too, leaning in so his and Keith’s foreheads gently bumped, and Keith laughed even louder. The two of them stood there, arm in arm, in the middle of a Denny’s parking lot, officially _boyfriends_ , and they just laughed and laughed and laughed. 

Finally, Shiro caught his breath enough to think again, and he decided that the thing he wanted most, in that moment, was to hug Keith close to him, so that’s exactly what he did. Keith’s arms circled around him, fitting like fingers in a glove, and Keith’s breath tickled on Shiro’s neck.

“Well, even if I didn’t get to punch Lance in his ugly face,” Keith eventually murmured, “I’d still count this evening as a total success.”

“Personally, I’d like two more things to happen in order to call it a _total_ success,” Shiro remarked, pulling back a little so he could look his boyfriend (!!!) in the eye.

“Aliens descending and confirming the existence of higher life forms on other planets?” Keith guessed.

“Three things,” Shiro amended.

“What?” Keith asked with that smile that turned Shiro’s heart into putty.

“First, I’d like to buy my boyfriend dinner, as previously mentioned. Second,” Shiro gently raised his hands to Keith’s face, his fingers just grazing along his jaw, and he heard Keith’s breath catch when he realized what Shiro was doing. The sound had no right to fluster him as much as it did. “May I kiss you?”

Keith’s warm, precious smile turned into that electric, heady grin that made Shiro feel like he was standing in the middle of a desert storm. “As many times as you like.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lance: I'm going to very romantically compare our love to that of Legolas and Gimli, other sworn enemies who became lovers, and I'm going to do it through elven text   
> Lance: Keith got me flowers!!!! Really pretty flowers!!! In a big bouquet!!!!   
> Lance: oh ho ho ho we are continuing to playfight because this is our relationship yes good   
> Lance: let's go out to Denny's   
> Lance, wearing a nice shirt and new jeans, looking at Keith with wrapped knuckles, a tanktop, and 200 pounds of pure BEEF with nice hair behind him: Uh.


End file.
